1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image formation apparatus, a printing data generation apparatus, a computer-readable recording medium, and printing data generation method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to improve throughput of printing, technique of performing the generation of bitmap data (printing data) based on page description language (PDL) data, the transfer of the data to a printer, and the like by using a plurality of operation sections have conventionally been proposed.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-73303 describes a technique of generating a page description language to be divided by the page to be able to cope with parallel processing by a host device in order to perform the parallel processing by the page in a multiprocessor printer equipped with a plurality of processors.
Because the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-73303, however, performs all of the pieces of processing from the analysis of PDL data and the expansion thereof to the transfer of the expanded PDL data to a printer engine in the manner of assigning one processor per page, delay at the time of the transfer of the PDL data to the printer engine easily arises.
The reduction of the aforesaid delay at the time of the transfer of the PDL data to the printer engine can be achieved by classifying a series of pieces of image processing of generating printing data on the basis of the PDL data into a task of performing language interpretation processing by the page and a task of performing rasterization processing by the band, and by assigning each of a plurality of operation sections to either one of the tasks.
If a fixed number of operation sections is, however, assigned to each of the task performed by the page and the task performed by the band, then some unused operation sections are led to exist in some numbers of pages to be printed. For example, if two operation sections are assigned to the task performed by the page and two operation sections are assigned to the task performed by the band, then one operation section becomes unused state when a printing request of one page is processed. In such a state, each operation section cannot be used efficiently, and the improvement of the processing speed of the whole image processing cannot be achieved.